Archive for September, 2009

What I really like of a MacBook is that as soon as you open the lid of the laptop you can work immediately. The display is immediately on, the mouse immediately moves and you have a network connection. So you can immediately lookup this thing on the web that you wanted to lookup.

On a PC laptop (both under Windows and Linux) first your screen stays black for a while, the mouse is frozen for some seconds and you need to wait until you get a network address. In the latest alpha of Ubuntu Karmic Koala the screen is turned on almost immediately but the mouse remains frozen but the mouse is frozen for approx. 5 seconds and also Network Manager needs 5-10 seconds to get an IP address.

Does anybody know how Apple does this? Is this just software or do they also use specific hardware for this?

Just came across this cool Japanese website called MP Change. You can upload a picture of your face and after that the application creates a video out of it in which your face, mouth and eyes move. Furthermore you can also change your hair, put a mustache etc. It looks all quite natural.

I’ve been playing around with Google Web Toolkit and Google App Engine in the past couple of months. I should be launching the web app soon. As my background is more in desktop programming I’m very impressed with the ease of use of GWT and App Engine. It integrates really nicely with Eclipse and makes making an AJAX enabled web app really easy because it generates all javascript for you.

A colleague at work send me a link to Wt. Which basically tries to do the same but does this with C++. It also has an embedded webserver which makes it ideal if you for instance want to run it on an embedded device because its resource usage is very low.

I was contacted by the people of iHeartMiro and they said that Amazon disabled their account because according to Amazon it violated their operating agreement. So if you installed the Firefox addon please uninstall it. I’ve already removed it from addons.mozilla.org

GNOME Amazon Store

When you make your Amazon purchases at this store the GNOME Foundation will receive a referral fee which amounts to 4-6% of the total purchase you make. Depending on where you live you can use the US, Canada, Germany, France, Japan or UK store.

Search Plugin

To make it even easier each of this store also has a Browser Search Plugin. If you click on the “Install Search Plugin” link you get a search plugin added to the search box on the top right of your browser. If you use that search plugin to find your product at the Amazon store the GNOME Foundation will also receive a referral fee.

Firefox Add-on

I’ve also made a Firefox addon (based on iHeartMiro) which automatically adds the Friend of GNOME affiliate code when you click on an Amazon product link or visit Amazon.com. However it will not change any affiliate code if it already exists because that is in violation with the Operating Agreement of Amazon Affiliates. So if you want to be sure that the GNOME Foundation receives a referral fee please use Search Plugin or the GNOME Amazon store. But then again it doesn’t hurt to have the Firefox extension installed and you can also install it on computers of friends and family.

If you have comments, remarks, ideas about the GNOME Amazon Store or know other ways that the GNOME Foundation can get money to support hackfests, conferences etc. join the discussion on the marketing-list

Update

I removed the Firefox Addon. I was contacted by the people of iHeartMiro and they said that Amazon disabled their account because according to Amazon it violated their operating agreement. So if you installed the Firefox addon please uninstall it. I’ve already removed it from addons.mozilla.org